If you are able to take a step back, you will recognize how incredible that is. For in February, he was embarrassed by being outed as a steroid cheat. His entire legacy was in shambles, and so was his credibility. For a player who cared endlessly about his place in baseball history and how he was perceived, could there have been anything more devastating?

Actually, yes. In March, Rodriguez learned he needed hip surgery. That threatened his ability to play or play well in 2009, and perhaps even jeopardized his career beyond that.

So before a pitch was thrown this season, Rodriguez’s body, mind, character and status were ravaged.

Thus, it would have been impossible to believe that in early August Rodriguez would be able to say, “I’m enjoying the game at a level that I really haven’t enjoyed before.”

Here on Aug. 8, Rodriguez spoke in front of his locker more expansively about his season and emotions than at any time this year. His 15th-inning, walk-off homer was in the recent past. He went 0-for-4 yesterday and it did not matter as the Yankees beat the Red Sox 5-0 to open a 51/2-game lead in the AL East.

The best fact about yesterday, however, for Rodriguez was that someone else was the guy in the press conference room across the hall explaining a positive result from the 2003 steroid survey testing.

David Ortiz became the latest to hide behind the supplement/vitamin/ignorance excuse. This time, however, Ortiz also had the heft of the union and its new chief sitting next to him. Michael Weiner said that between duplications and disputed tests, the number of failures could be as low as 83 from that mystical 104-player failure list. Therefore, Weiner explained, no one who is on “The List” could know for sure if they truly failed, which offered a sliver of plausible deniability for Ortiz.

The union theoretically could have done the same for Rodriguez, who also is on “The List.” But union officials have said in the past that Rodriguez wanted to do his revelatory press conference with his own handlers and not the Players Association. That is how we ended up with “boli” and cousin Yuri.

Yet Rodriguez insisted he had no regrets about the avenue he did take rather than following the Ortiz path, which might have clouded if he really was a steroid cheat.

“I’m so fired up about the way things came out and I took a lot of things off my chest,” Rodriguez said. “For me, since that press conference, I feel like a new man. I feel like I’ve been embraced by not only the city of New York, but my teammates, my coaches and my manager. I just feel liberated by the way I came out and did things.”

Rodriguez has mostly stayed low-key this year, or as low-key as someone with his high visibility and Kate Hudson as a girlfriend can. He has made himself scarce to the media. His performance on the field has been good, but not great, a reality of still recuperating from the hip issues. He has avoided the outrageous statement or act that had so pockmarked his Yankees tenure.

He has seemingly learned that the less said by him the better he will be perceived. It also has sure helped that new teammates such as Mark Teixeira and Nick Swisher have embraced him. Derek Jeter’s influence in the clubhouse and control of the temperament has dimmed somewhat. That has elevated Rodriguez’s comfort, also.

“This is the best I’ve ever gotten along with my teammates,” Rodriguez said. “This is the most at peace I’ve been in New York, too. The humiliation of spring training and how embarrassing and hard that was for me allows you to sit here now and move forward and play baseball and that’s what I’m good at. Anything else, when I have to talk, I’m not good at that.”

So what seemed impossible in February and March was reality yesterday. It was someone else across the hall in the uncomfortable press conference. Meanwhile, A-Rod was happier and more at peace playing baseball than ever before.